Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

cjsmall · 2018-11-19 06:15:02

For many years and on many versions of Xubuntu I have had a dual monitor set up, running a separate desktop on each monitor. After upgrading to 18.10 today, I'm up and running on my primary monitor (display :0.0), but nothing is displaying on the second monitor (display :0.1). However, the second monitor is not dark. When the desktop displays on :0.0, the :0.1 screen goes to a uniform light grey. It is being recognized, but the desktop session isn't being launched.

I have an Nvidia K4000 GPU and the system was using the v390 drivers, which I subsequently upgraded to the new 415 version. Updating the drivers made no change in behavior. To make sure that this wasn't a hardware problem, I activated Xinerama mode, rebooted, and the desktop did indeed span across the two screens, but this is not what I'm looking for. I need my two independent desktops on either monitor.

So, can anyone suggest where to look for the problem? I'm wondering if this might be a dbus issue, but I'm not familiar enough with that to look more deeply there.

Here is the monitor configuration from the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Nothing substantial has changed.

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 415.13

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 1600 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection
Section "Files"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Planar Systems, Inc."
ModelName "PX212M"
HorizSync 31.0 - 92.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 86.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Planar Systems, Inc."
ModelName "PX212M"
HorizSync 31.0 - 92.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 86.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "Quadro K4000"
BusID "PCI:4:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device1"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "Quadro K4000"
BusID "PCI:4:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "Stereo" "0"
Option "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
Option "metamodes" "DVI-I-0: 1600x1200 +0+0"
Option "SLI" "Off"
Option "MultiGPU" "Off"
Option "BaseMosaic" "off"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Device1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "Stereo" "0"
Option "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-3"
Option "metamodes" "DP-2: 1600x1200 +0+0"
Option "SLI" "Off"
Option "MultiGPU" "Off"
Option "BaseMosaic" "off"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "(null)" "Disable"
EndSection

Thanks.

cjsmall · 2018-11-27 11:09:30

I'd like to augment this post with some new important information:

When I boot the system, the second monitor receives signal and goes active with the screen turning a uniform grey. An xfce4 desktop session starts on monitor #1 (display :0.0) but not on the second monitor (:0.1) located to the left. Nevertheless, the mouse navigates to the second monitor and appears as a pointer on the screen. Also, the screen saver (Xscreensaver) starts up on the second monitor at the same time as on the first.

From the Settings menu:
* Nvidia shows a single display (image)
* ARrandR shows a single display (image)
* Display shows a single display (image)

However, the system is properly configured for two monitors as can be seen by the Nvidia X Server Configuration (image) and by inspecting /etc/X11/xorg.conf (shown above).

Things I've attempted or checked:

* Xubuntu 18.04 was using the proprietary v390 driver package and this was retained after the upgrade to 18.10. A change was made to use the open source v415 drivers, but this had no effect. (image)

* The second monitor was initially attached to the K4000 GPU DP-2 port. To rule out any possible hardware problem, the monitor was moved to DP-3 with no change.

* A review of /var/log/Xorg.0.log shows no errors.

Questions:

* Why is the second monitor active but not being detected on DP-3 by the OS? What needs to be addressed to rectify this?

* Why didn't the dual-desktop configuration get preserved between 18.04 and 18.10? What needs to be done to reactivate a desktop on the second monitor?

Here is some additional info:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 16384 x 16384
DVI-I-0 connected 1600x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 432mm x 324mm
1600x1200 60.00*+
1280x1024 85.02 75.02 60.02
1024x768 85.00 75.03 70.07 60.00
800x600 85.06 75.00 72.19 60.32 56.25
640x480 85.01 75.00 72.81 59.94
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# lshw -c video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: GK106GL [Quadro K4000]
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
resources: irq:84 memory:b2000000-b2ffffff memory:a0000000-afffffff memory:b0000000-b1ffffff ioport:a000(size=128) memory:c0000-dffff
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

kc12 · 2019-01-04 19:16:11

Did you ever find a solution/resolution for this?

I'm facing a similar issue, although in Fedora.

gert · 2019-03-10 09:24:24

I also came across this problem now using an Intel graphics card. With xfwm I can't get windows on the 0.1 screen, but I can one open there by specifying the display on the command line. Then when I move the mouse to the second screen it gets caught there and I can't move it back to the first screen. Something similar happens with mate. Both xfce and mate I've used on this type of Zaphodhead setup before, but that was when they were still using gtk2 as back end.

Currently I got something running by using blackbox as window manager. I still can get panels only on one screen and on 0.1 the settings don't seem to work on the second screen, probably because the daemon is run with --display :0.0 and running one with display :0.1 doesn't seem to be possible. I still have an old Gentoo installation where all this works. Currently, I don't have access to it, but AFAIK there I have still mostly xfce4 4.11 programs linked against gtk2.

cjsmall · 2019-03-28 19:19:02

Sorry I missed the reply going back to January!

No, I have not received and help in resolving the issue. I have filed two bug reports. The first was to the Xfce4 group and it can be found here:

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15116

The only response was to finally punt it over to the Ubuntu development, so I just posted a report here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1822181

I suggest that you monitor these two reports, and I would appreciate it if you could add details regarding your problems to the latter bug report, as it will help spur investigation if it is seen to be something affecting multiple people. Clearly there is some change that was made that has broken things, and the more data points we can accumulate, the better the chance of resolving this.

Regards,
--
Jeff

kc12 · 2019-06-19 15:30:59

I made a bug too, shortly after my comment. You have received more of a response on yours than I did. It is located here: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15050

I am able to load some programs on the monitor. For example, the following will open a terminal on my third monitor: DISPLAY=:0.1 xfce4-terminal

gert, to your point about the mouse getting trapped on one screen, I have had this happen in the past with my third monitor, but it has been awhile since it happened. I believe that it mostly happened when the position of one of the monitors changed, like unplugging one or having them slightly mis-aligned so that there is some space between them when you view them in nvidia-settings.

If I recall correctly, I eventually figured out that if you used alt-tab to select a program on one of the other desktops, then used ALT-F7 to move that window, it would bring your mouse back to the right one and you could un-trap it.

cjsmall · 2019-06-19 18:06:24

What remains so spectacularly annoying is that despite being able to run multiple desktops on different monitors up through Xubuntu 18.04, and despite multiple people reporting this on various forums and making multiple bug reports, there has been zero clear explanation as to what changed in 18.10/19.04 that makes it impossible to now run separate xfdesktop/xfwm4/xfce4-panel apps on different screens. And there appears to be very little concern regarding this from anyone involved in xfce4 development.

I'm ready to abandon Xubuntu. Can anyone recommend another version of Ubuntu that does support independent desktops (i.e., not using Xinerama mode) on multiple screens as a core part of the distribution? Thanks.

gert · 2019-06-29 17:30:47

@kc12 I found that the reason for the mouse becoming trapped on one screen is when the two screens have a different resolution, and there is a program that can be used to force the mouse on a screen: https://de.mcbf.net/david/dualscreenmouseutils/

@cjsmall I can understand your frustration, as far as I can tell, there are two things involved:xfce4 switched to gtk3, and in gtk3 support for handling screens and displays has been changed some time ago.

Now this patch https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfwm4/co … dd62eb99a1 seems to re-add this functionality with gtk3, but it only made it into xfwm 4.13, and Ubuntu only has 4.12. Maybe try this PPA

https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+arc … ter=cosmic

Currently I can't test it myself ...

cjsmall · 2019-06-30 18:26:41

Gert, thanks for the helpful information. Use of GTK has been causing all sorts of problems. GIMP went from GTK to GTK2 and many things broke. Now adoption of GTK3 appears responsible for this mess. It sure looks to me like the development and testing of GTK is a broken process. These sorts of radical changes in a toolkit upon which many other programs rely, should not be happening.

madmat · 2019-11-06 09:10:18

Hi,
@gert: thanks for the patch. I'm using gentoo and I updated my machine to xfce4.14, but I think, the patch does not work properly. I verified, that the patch is in the sources, but when i start xfce4, i have two xfwm4 processes which are bound to the same display and not to one display each:

$ ps ax | grep xfwm4
 3054 tty1     Rl     7:49 xfwm4 --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 2328a21a4-1d91-43e0-abb8-653e828ae93a
 3055 tty1     Sl     0:03 xfwm4 --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 2eaaa3e9b-4345-4d7c-980c-b189eb5b957c

Unfortunately, I don't know how to get the second xfwm4 process to be assigned to the display :0.1, could you help me with that?

cjsmall · 2019-11-06 19:26:14

madmat:

As the original poster, I've been struggling with this problem for years now. There is a useful parallel discussion that has been going on at this link:

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15116

A fellow named Olivier Fourdan seems to be the developer of xfwm4 and apparently he has a workaround built into the code that allows a single instance of xfwm4 to manage two screens. This is not the case with the other xfce4 components such as the desktop or panel managers.

I'm currently running Xubuntu 19.04 with two screens and Xfce 4.12. The xfce4 environment starts up on the primary screen (:0.0) as expected and I have a set of typical processes:

4214 xfce4-session
4223 xfwm4 --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 27f2d4ead-e803-4b48-9999-bcf20ff5baad
4232 xfce4-panel --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 20da3c5bf-1f04-466a-aff5-038a666ce87f
4233 xfsettingsd --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 25a6c25ee-17d3-4acb-8330-a810ce1c1c24
4240 xfdesktop --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 270dae5dd-c0df-4c6e-9e50-8b5342b6df91
4246 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/wrapper-1.0 \
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libmailwatch.so 16 16777224 \
        mailwatch Mail Watcher Check mail from multiple mailboxes 
4248 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/wrapper-2.0 \
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libindicator-plugin.so 37 \
       16777225 indicator Indicator Plugin Provides a panel area for Unity indicators. \
       Indicators allow applications and system services to display their status \
       and interact with the user.

As you can see, there is only a single xfwm4 process running. However, because of the workaround, I am able to launch programs on the second screen by specifying display :0.1, either directly or by setting the DISPLAY environment variable. Here are some example:

Launch Firefox: (DISPLAY=:0.1 firefox -P profile2 >/dev/null 2>&1 &)

Launch VNC Viewer: ssvncviewer -display :0.1 -scale 1.8 -passwd <pw_file> > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Launch terminal: xfce4-terminal --geometry 80x44+1500+1000 --display=:0.1 --disable-server -e ksh &

From a terminal on display :0.1, most additional programs can be launched and they then show up on the same display.

The really interesting thing is that multiple desktops are also supported on the second display! I would have thought that this was managed by the panel or desktop manager, but it is apparently part of xfwm4. You can't navigate the desktops as you normally would with the panel widget (since no panel!), but you can change desktops with the keyboard shortcuts. I have 8 desktops on my primary display and I discovered that I also have 8 independent desktops on the second display as well!

I suspect that to make this all happen, you need to make sure that Xinerama mode is turned off. I'm using an Nvidia K-4000 GPU with two screens attached to the two DisplayPorts. in /etc/X11/xorg.conf I have:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

I've been asking if all this will work with an upgrade to Xubuntu 19.10, but so far I've received no reply. I'm wary of upgrading and further breaking something is sort of works right now.

Try eliminating whatever is launching the second xfwm4 process, and then try a simple test with:

xfce4-terminal --geometry 80x44+1500+1000 --display=:0.1 --disable-server -e ksh &

and see if this shows up on the second monitor. The --disable-server is essential to get this to work.

Every program is different, so it has taken a lot of experimentation to get things.

Of course none of this has anything to do with the mouse getting stuck. I'm not having that problem.

Good luck!

madmat · 2019-11-07 08:34:30

@cjsmall:
thanks for your explanations, I have allready discovered and read that bug report. My hope was, that with the fix in 4.14, which I'm using, it would be somehow possible to spawn the panel app with some trick on the second X screen. Your tip for the xfce4-terminal with --disable-server is very usefull. I used that option some time ago and did forget about it.
Since I really like Zaphod Mode, which is not a limitation for me, because I don't need to be able to move windows from one screen to another, I probably will switch back to a xfce4 version which supports the Zaphod Mode with panels and desktop. But I also will have a look at another DE like mate, which might support Zaphod Mode.

But thanks again for your time and your post.

cjsmall · 2019-11-07 18:57:37

madmat:

When Gert reported above:

"Now this patch https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfwm4/co … dd62eb99a1 seems to re-add this functionality with gtk3, but it only made it into xfwm 4.13, and Ubuntu only has 4.12."

I was hopeful and waiting for a future release such as 20.04, but your report of using 4.14 is discouraging.

If you find any solution that supports Zaphod Mode, it would be really appreciated if you could report it back here. Many months ago I asked a general question on a number of Ubuntu forums about other flavors that properly support multi-head installations and got no response at all. It's still a mystery why such an essential feature as this seems to be of so little concern to the xfce4 developers.

madmat · 2019-11-08 13:51:36

@cjsmall:
I will report back, if I found a solution that works for me, but this will not be in the near future. Maybe I will just downgrade xfce to a version which works (aka uses gtk2).

I don't think that the xfce devs are to blame, since the devs of gtk-3 removed the support for zaphod head setups, so it probably would be an ugly hack by the xfce devs to bring this feature back. I do understand the position of the xfce devs on this topic.

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#1 2018-11-19 06:15:02

Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#2 2018-11-27 11:09:30

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#3 2019-01-04 19:16:11

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#4 2019-03-10 09:24:24

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#5 2019-03-28 19:19:02

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#6 2019-06-19 15:30:59

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#7 2019-06-19 18:06:24

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#8 2019-06-29 17:30:47

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#9 2019-06-30 18:26:41

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#10 2019-11-06 09:10:18

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#11 2019-11-06 19:26:14

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#12 2019-11-07 08:34:30

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#13 2019-11-07 18:57:37

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

#14 2019-11-08 13:51:36

Re: Xubuntu 18.10 broke my dual monitor dual desktop

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